Toshiko Kobayashi

This fascinating Japanese drama takes an objective look at the relationship between American GIs and deserters in Japan during the Vietnam war. (All Movie Guide)

A cunning female jewel thief named Black Lizard who tries to kidnap Sanaye, a wealthy jeweler's beautiful daughter as part of a plot to steal the jeweler's expensive "Star of Egypt" diamond. To thwart the planned kidnapping, the jeweler hires Japan's number one detective, the brilliant Akechi. (imdb)

Living in a small coastal village, Wakae, 15, works as a bar hostess. Her mother died and her father is an alcoholic and poor. While she has just stolen a pair of shoes she meets Saburo, who tries to help her. Though soon they will separate. (mubi.com)

Makoto and Kiyoshi's generation follows their desires. She's in high school when a university student... (imdb)

The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob. (Hulu.com)

Drama about a group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity adapted from the diaries of real prisoners. (criterion.com)

A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply. (KG)

A romantic drama depicting the lives of two generations of a family who run a florist shop in Tokyo. (KG)

Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world and their place in it, despite the fact that she knows full well that most of them will die in the war. (imdb)

SOMEWHERE BENEATH THE WIDE SKY (1954, aka KONO HIROI SORA NO DOKOKA NI) came near the end of Masaki Kobayashi's formative period as a director -- scripted by the sister of his mentor Keisuke Kinoshita (and scored by Kinoshita's brother), this drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails. (KG)

A naive stripper falls for an artist engaged to the daughter of a controversial female politician. (imdb)

In The Good Fairy Kinoshita juxtaposes two extremes - the smarmy world of tabloid journalism and the hero's (Rentaro) romantic longings for a sweet 19 year old girl who is scheduled to die within the next few months. She has no prospect of future life and her family is poor, which means that loving her makes absolutely no practical sense at all. If she dedicates herself to him, it is an easy dedication; with only a few months to live, she has nothing to lose. (Fully Reconditioned)

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.

An early Kinoshita film in which the feudal traditions of the Japanese family unit are lightly satirized. Broken Drum was mentioned very positively as being "successful" by Donald Richie in his overviews of Japanese film. It was co-written by the great Kobayashi Masaki, and Narushima Toichiru worked on it as an assistant director (along with Kobayashi), who would go on to be an important new wave cinematographer for Oshima and Yoshida as well as a director in his own right. (Steven H)